The Jackaroos.
Border between Queensland and New South Wales.
June 16th.
The group didn’t seem eager to pack their things and leave. Many of the runaways weren’t keen on going out into the inclemency of the Outback. Leaving the Paroo river near Hungerford wasn’t enough, and they needed to keep moving away from water, food and shelter. All to stay away from their enemy. To stay free.
It was a slight, near imperceptible depression, which seemed to open up to the north towards one of the valleys that branched out from the Paroo to the east. The water, which miraculously flowed out from the earth near the road, had been used in the past to irrigate the surrounding area, perhaps to the grazing of animals. It had been a balm for the fugitives, having placed their tents for two nights now.
But if Aaron’s reports were correct, patrols had nearly picked up their trail at Hungerford, and they very well might come up through the road. They had to move up and get as far from the highway as possible.
Carolina agreed, but she admitted to her own privacy that she was tired.
After all their efforts and struggle? After all their near-death experiences and the loss of friends in the marshes? After moving on and keeping up the fight, had they been reduced to this? To this?
“Just this…” She mumbled, stopping her work on tightening her pack and looking around. A bunch of teenagers struggled to roll a tent. Further ahead another one seemed at the brink of tears, sitting by the pond. She understood why. The Outback was merciless.
Luckily they hadn’t lost anybody. But they all knew the worse was to come. And with no end in sight either. They would just walk west and hope for better. And that nobody died of thirst or hunger in the meantime.
She passed a cord around her wrist to tense it and pass a clip beneath it with her good hand, then released the stump.
It had healed as much as it would. The sediments had all fallen off or healed after intense efforts to reconstruct her own flesh. There was a vague resemblance of her thumb and her little finger, small bumps that came out of the upper third of her hand. The rest was gone, and the bone all the way to the elbow was still in pain, sending piercing shocks whenever she loaded it.
And of course, she had lost something else too.
“You ready to go?” Lutana walked up to her. Carolina had been staring at the boy sitting by the pond for some time now. He wasn’t moving, but almost at the time Luta came to her somebody called him.
“Yes. How long shall we walk today?”
This was her usual phrase at the start of every trek. Lutana looked at her worried. “Don’t know. Hopefully we can find another pond nearby. But you tell us…”
“It’s dry from here to the west. We might be lucky. But with the Reich at our heels, or worse, I wouldn’t tempt it.”
She began walking through the dying camp towards the meeting point, where everybody gathered before departing, over a small ridge by the road.
“We don’t have to force you to do it just yet. You aren’t fully recovered.” The neuropath walked just behind her and spoke her mind. “Carolina. You nearly died down there. You are not ready.”
“Once we go in there we will all be dying. That until I make some water for us. It’s simple.”
“No! It is not. I had to literally revive you twice in that tunnel. You were a dead husk and I was the fucking puppeteer. I don’t want to go through that again, and neither should you. If Santiago could tell you anything…”
“But he can’t, Luta!” Carolina stopped on her heels and turned. She wasn’t angry, but her outburst was enough to send some looks in her direction. “He is gone! God knows if we will ever see him again. Or Beatrice.”
Lutana was working her power on her, as she could very clearly feel her building rage buried under… something. It made her more angry, but she wasn’t able to manifest it in any way. “Stop it!”
The grip was cut open. Lutana sighed. “Had we told you. You would have stayed, right?” Her voice was softer now. “But then we would all have stayed behind. I know that telling you it was the only way won’t do anything. But try to give yourself time to process it.”
Carolina tried not to vent the frustration of her words and nodded. “What else could I do?”
“Whatever you like. This is your grief to take, not ours. But you are not alone at it, and we will give you all the time you need. But please don’t redirect it into something you don’t need to do. And I tell you. You don’t need to make water for everybody. Not just yet.”
Lutana began walking towards the road. Carolina called out to her. “Will Janna be alright?” The girl stopped and turned to smile to her.
“Like the four times I’ve told you. She was in a coma, but she could come back if they helped her.”
That didn’t cheer Carolina up, once more. But it gave her something else to hold to. Lutana rolled her eyes and walked to get, taking her by the good arm.
“Come on! Let’s do this day and see if we can get somewhere quite by sundown. Aaron said he has something to show me.”
Santiago Menzendorf Carvallo.
Status: P.O.W.
Peplín was, if anything, the perfect spot to keep a bunch of teenagers under watch and free from ideas of escaping. It was also green. Like anything that Santiago had ever seen before. The group of newcomers had half-adapted to their new situation and now made a third of the current population of the township. He walked out of the house they set aside for them and went to join his comrades on their way to load grain onto a truck. Not a punishment for the rebellion on the Dynasties. They had asked for something to do, instead of rotting away in a small manor.
It was their fifth day there.
“We’ll have breakfast there.” One of the other prisoners said. Though prisoners was a strong word. They weren’t in uniform anymore, and to Santiago it was a welcome change since his late days in Buller. Santiago himself had a light sweater that he would surely take off once the work began, and the others had similarly light-weather clothes that were given to them short after their arrival. Much better than the yellow dickies they had to wear until their definitive transfer.
The line of seven, those who had volunteered to stay busy, walked down the dirt path. They knew they were being watched, and they weren’t really supposed to go just anywhere. Every one of their moves had to be announced beforehand to an armed guard outside of the house, and they weren’t supposed to be out of sight for over fifteen minutes. Not that Santiago wasn’t unaware they couldn’t really be out-of-sight.
At least they could talk to the locals. An old lady gave them a smile as they passed by her front garden. He imagined they didn’t see lots of young people in that place. They waved back and kept walking until reaching the entrance to small road with houses around, and which ended quickly at the head of a granary. A man with an unpronounceable last name, which Santiago and rest would acceptably utter as “Ñiekhou”, waved at them and smiled. Each one used a broken version of dzień dobry before going into the granary and putting on a couple of gloves before moving sacks of grain. Luckily the guard was kind enough to give them instructions two days before, and Mr. “Ñiekhou” was good at expressing himself through gestures to give them new simple tasks to perform.
“I was thinking of what they said on our arrival.” A boy called John, one of the two who volunteered to stay early at Cobar, said as they moved a bag of barley out through the door.
“Keep your eyes on the road, don’t you dare to trip!” Santiago reminded him. “It can wait to the truck!”
They tossed the bag on the back of the truck and walked back to the granary. Lady “Ñiekhou”, a woman frighteningly younger than her husband, walked to the granary with a trace of cups and a kettle, no doubt preparing a small breakfast for the workers.
“What was it?” he asked John.
“The reeducation thing? They said many things in that induction. But that’s the only thing that seemed important, other than rules.”
They came into the granary again, and Santiago noticed the smell of coffee. But they needed to do one more bag before eating. “Do you think they tried to scare us?” He asked, unsure.
“Well…” John thought for a second. Then halted before the stack of bags. Santiago also stopped. “We are a bunch of psychotic kids with knowledge on military equipment and a potential aversion and skill at killing metas.”
Those were somewhat subversive words. Santiago had admittedly been worried at the use of the word “reeducation”. Now he was scared somebody heard what john said.
“Shut the fuck up, would you?”
John chuckled and picked up his part of the bag.
Breakfast was pretty good. Butter and bread was enough to kill the last remnants of the boys’ somnolence. They talked about another group, which included Beatrice, that wanted to work on something else, and the guards were checking with the neighbors for alternatives.
“They won’t want us all working at the same place.”
Santiago agreed, partially.
“They won’t go as far as to scatter us all. They need us watched. Can’t have eighteen guards here in the middle of nowhere.” The coffee was a life savior. “I believe the lady in the house on the road will need help with some herd. Isn’t she the one making the butter?”
“You fear one of the others might try to poison you?” Somebody joked, and a general giggle followed as another of the teens simulated choking on bread, which ended in another one slapping his back after he actually started to choke.
Santiago had to wipe the tears after the joke was done, and the group calmy finished their breakfast before going to work.
Back at the house, a warehouse that been refurbished into a manor surrounded by smaller cottages, one left for their guards and another as a hospital, Santiago relaxed after a nice day of work. It was fulfilling, and he realized he had barely worked a day in his old life. Well. Military training was working. But he chuckled imagining Dolores finding new creative ways to somehow avoid working. He wondered where she was.
At least Janna was waking up, moving in and out of the coma Lutana had placed her into. He hadn’t been able to visit her while awake, but made sure to check on her and the other wounded every. That he would do until the last one left that house and the hospital was empty.
If only he could tell Carolina.
